Highly polarized photoluminescence from c-plane InGaN/GaN multiple quantum wells on stripe-shaped cavity-engineered sapphire substrate

Highly polarized photoluminescence (PL) from c-plane InGaN/GaN multiple quantum wells (MQWs) grown on stripe-shaped cavity-engineered sapphire substrate (SCES) was realized. The polarization ratio was as high as 0.74 at room temperature. High-resolution X-ray reciprocal space mapping measurements revealed that the InGaN quantum wells on GaN/SCES template were under considerable anisotropic in-plane strain states of −1.178% and −1.921% along the directions perpendicular and parallel to the stripe-pattern, respectively. The anisotropic strain states were attributed to the anisotropic alignment of cavity-incorporated sapphire nano-membranes, which accommodated both anisotropic elastic relaxation in the InGaN quantum well plane as well as the graded elastic relaxation along the vertical direction in the GaN template adjacent to the InGaN/GaN MQWs. The partial strain relaxation in the InGaN wells also contributed to reduction of quantum confined Stark effect, resulting in four times higher PL intensity than InGaN/GaN MQWs on planar sapphire substrate. From theoretical calculations based on k∙p perturbation theory, it was found that fundamental origin of the polarized optical emission was strain-induced modification of valence band structures of the InGaN/GaN MQWs on the SCES. This study will allow us to realize light emitting diodes with highly polarized emission with conventional c-plane sapphire substrates by strain-induced valence band modification.